


Two People

by volti



Series: The Impressionist [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teachers, Blind Character, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-18 00:03:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3548564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volti/pseuds/volti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jean, a blind French teacher, bonds with Mikasa, the art teacher, through painting and takes her to his first gallery showing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two People

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually for Selena/i-really-heichou, based on a giant headcanon we've been working on. Originally this came from a post by super-sandri on Tumblr and we just expanded on the idea on our own.
> 
> There may or may not be multiple pieces in this series. Who knows? I sure don't. Guess we'll find out soon \o\

It felt like people in there. That, Mikasa said, was why she brought him outside the gallery.

Jean wasn’t really sure how she could figure that out so easily, with him on her arm, leading him to speak with reporters and explain in few words what this or that painting meant to the occasional bystander. Maybe it was all that time he spent lingering in her art classroom, squinting at canvases and passing his fingers over the different paints—he could tell them apart now by their containers and texture—and asking why she let him there in the first place.

“Everyone deserves to be artistic,” Mikasa told him once in that simple tone, though Jean could never tell if she was weary from teaching or just herself. He could remember the vague outline of her when she said it, palette in one hand and brush in the other, hair pulled back with one of those tortoise shell clips. Or maybe he was imagining that. He wouldn’t put it past him to fill in the blanks he couldn’t see. But the phrase, the way she said it, that was real, he knew that much. Because he reminded himself of it every time he picked up a brush, every time he stretched a new canvas in her classroom and taught her a few French words in return. Even when he’d gotten the phone calls from the gallery and the news stations and hesitated when he asked her to come with him, and when she hesitated right back and then agreed. As a guide, she said.

Of course. Wasn’t that all the situation ever allowed her to be?

“Jean? Are you okay?”

He snapped to attention, the grip on his cane tightening, then settled and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Oh. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Just trying to collect myself.” He gave a weak smile, not quite sure if she could see it. “It felt like people in there, right?”

“Right…” Slowly, she slipped away from his arm and took a step back. She might have cast a glance back inside. Jean couldn’t really tell, with the blur and his attention split between the murmur of guests and the dull roar of the streets and how, if he concentrated hard enough, he could recreate her touch, gentle yet precise, on his wrist.

He let out a nervous laugh to break their silence and cut through the anxiety. “I guess you imagined having more fun on a Friday night than running in and out of here with me, huh?”

“No. Not really.” She might have shaken her head, she might have held her breath, but she definitely reached for his hand. He hadn’t realized how cold her fingers were—or how his heart started to pick up—until they coiled and slid between his. “I don’t mind being here.”

“What a relief.” Jean laughed again; it was starting to feel like people out here, too. He tried to focus on the sounds of passing cars and how vaguely golden everything looked, sometimes mindful of Mikasa’s fingertips pressing against his knuckles, sometimes pushing the feeling away to keep himself calm. “Thank you. For coming with me,” he added after a deep breath. And then, as a stuttered afterthought he hoped she couldn’t hear, “I bet you look beautiful tonight.”

Mikasa cleared her throat and gave his hand a gentle squeeze, and God, she probably did hear him. Maybe she wanted to go back inside and pretend he hadn’t said anything, like he hadn’t made a fool of himself like the teenage boys he lectured about false cognates and pulling up their pants. “You really are talented, you know,” she said. “You deserved this.” He thought maybe her voice was shaking, if he listened closely enough.

Stiffening, he began to tap his cane against the ground. She probably knew it was a nervous tic—he wouldn’t put it past her. “Well, I mean, that’s all thanks to you, right? For teaching me, and being patient with me, and never… you never thought I wasn’t capable of doing things.”

“I knew you were more than capable,” she said, as though it should have been as obvious to him as it was to her.

They were quiet for a moment after that. She was still brushing her fingers against the back of his hand; he was still tapping his cane against the ground and hoping his heart would start to match it soon.

Then Mikasa said, “I think I want to kiss you,” and he stopped and thought the world might have too.

“Oh.” His hand slipped away from hers and reached up to press against his cheek, as if preparing himself for what it might feel like. It would be quick, wouldn’t it? Something between friends, like his did back home.

And then her fingers were touching the line of his jaw, almost like they were afraid to, and she added, “On the mouth, I mean. I… didn’t want to startle you.”

Jean blinked—“Oh”—and nearly dropped his cane, and she let out a breath that sounded like a laugh to him.

Mikasa took a step closer to him, and the touch of her hands and the encouraging words she spoke under her breath were too smooth to betray anything other than composure. All he could go on was the scent of her perfume and the heat of the gallery and how it felt like people. Two people.

She coaxed his cane out of his grip—amazing, how she could get him to relax in a matter of seconds—and rested it against the wall. “Ready?”

He nodded and brought her hands to his face again, was even brave enough to rest her thumbs on his lips. His eyes fell shut on instinct.

Jean had read some years ago that every nerve stood on end in the moments before a kiss. He never believed it, because it never happened, not with any of the girls and boys he’d been with before. But it happened with Mikasa when she tugged him closer, when she kissed him, careful and soft like the rest of her. He didn’t know how long it was before she leaned back again, only that one of his hands was cradling the back of her neck and her hair was tickling his cheek, and that she was everything he ever thought she would feel like but never let himself admit.

His hands dropped to his sides when she pulled away, and she kept her hands on his face. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she could hear his blood pounding—he could barely hear anything over it.

Mikasa let out that little laugh-breath again, stroking his cheek with her thumb. “Do you want to do it again? One more time, before we go back inside.”

He smiled wide enough that he could feel his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yeah.”

She took his hand and leaned in; he could have swallowed her words as she spoke them. “Then you do it this time.”


End file.
